In the recent years, optical fiber cables have pushed ahead the industrial sector globally by offering a variety of solutions for enabling a reliable, efficient, lighter, faster and cost effective management of resources. Moreover, the variety of solutions involve a faster telecommunication service, a precise sensing of defects, a medical surgical operation, structural studies in civil engineering, imaging applications, nuclear power research and the like. One of the prime industries which utilize the optical fiber cable is exploration and production industry. The exploration and production industry focuses on exploring and extracting various natural resources including oil, gas, petroleum and the like.
Moreover, the numerous operations in the exploration and production industry critically rely on usage of drilling machines, boring machines, pumping machines, excavators, cranes and trucks due to their nature of the operations. There is a consistent need for continuous monitoring and sensing of various seismic activities taking place in area of operations of the exploration and production industry. Traditionally, the sensing and monitoring is performed by utilizing various sensing applications. The sensing applications employ various sensing systems. This is achieved by installing optical fiber cable across the seismic activity area. An array of acoustic sensors is installed along the length of the optical fiber cables with a separation between each of the acoustic sensors. Furthermore, the acoustic sensors detect and analyze the acoustic waves generated in the optical fiber cable.
Moreover, the efficiency, grade and performance of the results obtained from the optical detectors and the array of acoustic sensors is based on a structure and materials used in manufacturing of the optical fiber cable. Further, the structure and the materials used affects weight, crush resistance, kink diameter, packing efficiency and cost of deploying optical fiber cable in the seismic activity area. Traditionally, the structure of the optical fiber cable is made of a number of layers housing a plurality of optical fibers. The number of layers includes a binder enclosing optical fibers, a buffer coating, strengthening fibers, a cable jacket and one or more strength members.
Several present systems are known in the art which provide the optical fiber cables employed in the exploration and production industry. For example, a dielectric optical fiber with reduced preferential bending is described in one of the prior arts. The optical fiber cable includes one or more tubes with each tube containing a number of optical fibers and a plastic jacket that encloses the tubes. A pair of diametrically opposed rods is partially embedded in the polyethylene jacket. The rods are made from continuous-filament glass fibers embedded in epoxy. The optical fiber cable uses a buffer tube with thixotropic gel filled inside.
Moreover, an optical fiber cable with an interlocking stitch binder is described in another prior art. The optical fiber cable includes a plurality of fibers, binders, a water blocking material and a jacket surrounding the tubes. The binder provides an interlocking stitch formed of one or more yarns to provide improved fiber unit identification. The binder in the above mentioned optical fiber cable is non-helically bounded. In addition, the optical fiber cable utilizes a water blocking material that evidently increases the thickness of the optical fiber cable. In addition, the jacket material is made of poly vinyl chloride or polyethylene. The above mentioned optical fiber cable is inefficient for the seismic activity area.
Going further, the existing optical fiber cables available are inefficient and unreliable when employed in the exploration and production industry. Presently, the optical fiber cable utilizes a wet buffer tube that eventually restrains the acoustic waves required for the sensing applications.
In light of the above stated discussion, there is a need for an optical fiber cable that overcomes the above stated disadvantages.